My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  I went to get Drake, who was playing in what I thought was the playroom. The boys had gotten into some boxes and were now playing sword fights with dildos. My son was winning because he was holding a black one, and it was so much larger than Lucy’s son’s white one.

  “What is going on in here!” I screamed to Lucy as I looked down to see more sex toys, lubricants, and DVDs that would make Jenna Jameson blush.

  Lucy said, “What’s the big deal? I’m just a small-time distributor of porn to help with the income. It’s not like I’m in porn . . . anymore.”

  I was out of there as Drake was crying that he wanted his big black sword.

  Note to self: defriend.

  15

  B-DAY PARTY

  When I was in the second grade, I passed out eight birthday invitations to my eight favorite girlfriends in the classroom. On that same morning, one of my lucky invitees passed out invites to her birthday party, which was on the same day, at the same time. So guess who didn’t get invited? Me. She didn’t invite me! Had she not seen my Cindy Brady impression, where I lisp about my doll, Kitty Karry-All? It was hilarious. Worse, almost all of the girls she invited I had also invited to my party. One by one they came up to me to thank me for the invite but they just got Mary’s and were going to attend her party instead. I guess because Mary was more popular and, to be honest, just more normal than me. Only my best friend, Liz, said she would come to my party. Even in the second grade, Liz had my back and said to me, “No matter who comes or doesn’t come to your party, I will be there.” That night the phone rang and I overheard my mother talking to Mary’s mother. My mother said, “Why, of course we’ll change our date to the following Saturday. That is no problem.” Why the hell do we need to change our date? I thought. The next morning in class, Mary approached my desk with a small square envelope with my name on it and said, “Heather, I forgot this at home yesterday. It’s your invite to my birthday party and I really want you to come.” I had to fight back the tears, it was so sweet of her to say. It’s the same emotional feeling I get when I imagine my eulogy and all my family and friends finally seeing what an incredible person I was. When I opened the invite it said, “Come to Mary’s for a swimming sleepover.” Shit, it was the exact same party I was planning to have. She even boasted she was going to have a Carvel ice-cream birthday cake like I was planning to have. Her party was the Saturday before the last few days of school, and mine was to be the night after the last day, which was a Thursday.

  Finally, my big day arrived. The party was supposed to begin at noon, but by twelve thirty the only loser there besides me was Liz. My mom got out the school directory and started calling the other invitees’ homes. Everyone had forgotten. Really, in one day since school was over everyone forgot? What bullshit. A few managed to come, but some were already gone for the day and cell phones didn’t exist yet. In fact, even Mary didn’t manage to make it. However, it turned out to be a pretty fun party and there was a lot more room to lay out our sleeping bags on our living-room floor than if everyone had showed up. The whole experience really affected me (hence me writing about it thirty years later). Mary went on to get married and divorced twice. I’m not saying that had anything to do with her not inviting me, forcing me to change my party to a week later, and then failing to show up. I’m just saying that is how her life turned out.

  Liz at my birthday party. Even back then she had my back and loved hearing my stories.

  So for my kids’ birthdays, I want to make sure that (a) no one’s feelings get hurt because they are not invited (the classes are too large to invite everyone) and (b) people remember to show up once they’ve RSVP’d. I explained to my children that we were mailing the invites to their friends’ homes and that they are not to talk about the impending party at school, or about how fun it was on the school playground afterward. In other words, keep it on the DL (the down-low, but since they’re children I’ve never explained that DL is also code for black men who fuck men on the side while being married to women).

  As you probably know from watching Chelsea Lately, the staff is quite social. However, not everyone is invited to everything, and even worse, that not-invited someone is often me. The reasons behind it are the usual: “But you have kids, and you’re married.” Yeah, so what? I’ll dump them for a fun Sunday brunch with Chelsea and friends with unlimited Bloody Marys. Just invite me. Let me decide if my spending time on a Sunday with my family is that important. I just hate it when on a Monday morning, while we’re all gathering in the writers’ room, I have to be subjected to the twenty minutes of conversation from my cowriters and supposed friends that goes something like this: “You should have seen Brad Friday night at Jen Aniston’s house. He was so wasted he was just mumbling to her about how he cried when she and Ross finally got together. Oh, it was bad, and then on Saturday, we’re in Chelsea’s pool and Brad starts up again with the exact same boring story he told the night before while Jennifer is just trying to get a tan on the floatie. Like she wants to hear that?” And I’m thinking, Wait, they not only went to Jennifer Aniston’s house on Friday but then hung out with her on Saturday too? I’m the one who does the Jen Aniston impression. I should have been invited to at least one of the events. Then from Steve Marmalstein: “I came later, just for dinner on Saturday night, but sure enough between the second and third course, there is Brad talking Jen’s ear off again.” Marmalstein was invited? He’s not even a round-table regular, only on After Lately. I couldn’t stand it any longer and I said, “Did any of you go to kindergarten? You are not supposed to talk about the party in front of people who were not included. Can you just keep it on the down-low like black men who are gay?” Then Jen Kirkman says, “No, Heather, we thought about calling you on Sunday when Chelsea texted us saying to meet her at the Hotel Bel-Air for brunch, but then we knew how you and your family go to church.” There was a Sunday party too? We blow off church all the time, especially when it’s brunch at the Bel-Air with Chelsea. “God, do you not know what happened to me in the second grade?” I cried.

  “Yes, we do know, and that is one of the reasons we don’t invite you. You repeat stories even more than Brad,” said Chris.

  We’ve been pretty lucky with the boys’ parties. When they were little, we would rent out an indoor play place for two hours, but when my son Drake was turning eight I wanted to do something a little more special, so I booked a bowling party. Peter was bitching about it because Drake’s birthday is October 29, so for the past four years we would have a combo birthday-Halloween party, and the activity was trick-or-treating and the gift bag was the candy they collected from the neighbors—easy and cheap. I put my foot down and just said, “Peter, don’t worry about it. I’m doing everything. Just show up on Saturday at one p.m. at the Woodland Hills Bowl.”

  The Bowl is your typical slightly rundown bowling alley. It hasn’t changed much since I went there as a kid. When I arrived with Drake, Brandon, and Mackenzie, I noticed several vans in the parking lot. I didn’t think much of it and as we were walking into the establishment, we saw a group of handicapped and mentally challenged adults. My kids know how to act around people who are “special,” so that didn’t make me nervous, but when we got inside and noticed that every single lane except for two in the middle were being enjoyed by severely handicapped adults, I did get nervous. The hostess took us to the two reserved lanes for our party, which was smack in the middle of the Special Olympics. And then here comes Peter. This is what I hate. Whenever I seem to take charge of something that he is not behind, for example, this bowling party, it’s a disaster and I hate that he gets to be right about yet another thing. I walked right up to Peter and said, “OK, I forgot that there is nothing that adults with Down Syndrome enjoy more than bowling, but I think this could be good for the kids to interact with them and therefore learn to be compassionate and grateful.” Peter responded by saying, “Whatever you say. It was your idea, your party.” As I helped my kids put on their bowling shoes before their guests a
rrived, one of the bowlers to our right came up to me and handed a disposable camera to her friend and then put her arm around me and said, “Take a picture, take a picture.” I smiled for the picture as I always do. I have to admit I was a little surprised that they watched Chelsea Lately, but apparently we appeal to a very wide audience, and to be honest our jokes aren’t the most sophisticated. Then she went up to Peter and did the same thing. “Take a picture, take a picture.” So he took a picture with her. This woman wasn’t a fan of mine, she was just a fan of taking pictures. Soon, she was in our lane and wanted to be part of our group. Drake knew not to say anything, so he whispered to me, “Mom, she’s holding my ball.” I thought this was strange even for her because every one of the special-needs bowlers had their own personalized balls with matching shoes and shirts based on their teams. I guess the same day as Drake’s birthday was some kind of tournament for them. So I went over to her and said as nicely as I could, “I’m sorry, that is my son’s ball and we only have enough room for his friends to play in this lane.” She then angrily gave me the seven-pound ball back and said, “Chuy is funny. You’re not funny!” and stormed off to her bowling team. She then pointed me out to her teammates who all started laughing at me. That is when I decided I’d had enough. No one tells me that I’m less funny than Chuy Bravo, especially on my son’s eighth birthday. So I talked to our hostess and she was able to move us to the last two lanes of the bowling alley so we were somewhat off by ourselves. Drake ended up having a great day, and when we were leaving I saw the woman who’d criticized my comedic talent roll her bowling ball into the gutter and I felt a real sense of satisfaction.

  This year, it was Brandon’s sixth birthday on January 21, and being January it’s too risky to plan anything outside, even in sunny Southern California. I was really busy at work, so I told Peter to plan the whole thing and then bugged the shit out of him, making him call and e-mail each parent who had RSVP’d two days before, and then the day before, to remind them about Brandon’s party on Saturday. Again I didn’t want just Liz and her son to be the only two to show up as a bitter reminder of my own childhood birthday disaster. Peter chose a new indoor play place called Jump & Fly. It had just opened up the month before and was a huge hit on the kid party circuit. It’s a bunch of trampolines in several different areas in bright blue, yellow, and hot pink, so the place really feels alive. It is too large to rent out the entire place, but they offer party packages where you get a table and pizza, but you bring the cake. The only thing I had to do per Peter’s instruction was to buy twenty stuffed Angry Birds. The Angry Birds were advertised as 70 percent off at Ralphs grocery store. When we found them in the bin at Ralphs, they were listed at $11.99. I got twenty, but then as I was about to check out I saw small Angry Birds that clip onto your backpack listed at $7.99 but were 70 percent off. Being married for eleven and half years at the time I was sure those were the ones Peter was referring to. So I took all the big ones out of my cart and bought the twenty small ones. When I got home, I proudly said, “I got all the Angry Birds for the gift bags for only $2.40 each.” Peter looked in the bag and said, “Not those, the medium-size ones.” This was one of the more surprising moments in my marriage. “But these are cheaper,” I argued. “Yes, but for only about a buck more each kid goes home with one four times the size; that’s a good party gift. Didn’t you do the math?” I was dumbfounded. “The math? I thought if I came home with twenty large Angry Birds, you would have been angrier than all the birds combined and I wasn’t interested in spending the night at a battered-women’s shelter, so I switched them out for the less-expensive ones.” (No, Peter’s never hit me. Yes, I like to exaggerate for dramatic purposes.) The only time he ever went for a more expensive item was when it came to toilet paper. I guess now I know that when it comes to Angry Birds, or Peter’s asshole, money is no object.

  A half hour before we were to leave for Brandon’s big party, I got a text from my sister Shannon, who was on her way, saying, “We got caught in a sandstorm, I couldn’t see. We had to turn around, so sorry.” A sandstorm? What the hell is that? Shannon had lived in the Palm Springs area for more than thirteen years and this had never happened. Was she in Dubai? I called bullshit and texted her, saying basically that. It pissed me off because she was three hours late for Christmas and I never said anything and she canceled the week before to meet us in Mammoth and I never said anything—so today I decided to say something. She wrote me back a pretty angry text, saying, “I’m sorry, you’ve never experienced a sandstorm but I’m still shaking from it. None of us wanted to miss Brandon’s party.” I knew she wouldn’t want to miss it, but I was getting that panicked feeling. She has two kids, so that was now two fewer party guests, and two extra Angry Birds. I just wrote back, “OK” and yelled at my kids to get their shoes on.

  Peter left with Drake to pick up Brandon’s cake, and I was to meet him at Jump & Fly with Brandon and Mackenzie. Just as I was buckling myself into the car, my phone rings and it’s Peter but all I hear is, “It’s Brandon Dobias. Can you check again? It’s his birthday.” Oh my God, Jump & Fly lost his reservation was all I could think of. “Peter, Peter!” I yelled into the Bluetooth in my car. Then I realized he’d butt-dialed me, so I continued to listen. “Oh, the cake looks great, thanks,” he said. I hung up and told myself to just relax, but how could I when we drove up to Jump & Fly and it was packed with minivans and huge Suburbans beeping and trying to fit into compact-car parking spots. Jump & Fly, with all the jumping on trampolines, provides a great workout, so every fat kid in the Valley was being dragged there by a parent. Also, it had rained that morning, so it was even more crowded due to soccer games being canceled. We finally got a spot. Too bad there were no designated parking places for parents spending hundreds of dollars on a party.

  When we entered, a few parents I recognized from our school were already there and had a look of disbelief on their faces. The place was wild. It was like a kids’ nightclub, and “I’m Sexy, and I Know It” was blaring through the loudspeakers. There were kids ranging in age from two to seventeen. One of the mothers from Brandon’s kindergarten class held her daughter close to her thigh and said, “Wow, we’ve never been here. This is quite a place.” “Yes, just think of it as New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas,” I joked. I went up to the front desk and screamed to be heard over the fist-pumping jams. “Hi, I’m Brandon Dobias’s mom, Heather. Our party started at one thirty, but I just got here; there was no parking.”

  “Yes, I’m Kadisha. I’m your party host. I’m supposed to show you to your table, but I’m too busy to do that right now.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “The kids can just jump on any trampoline and then we’ll bring pizza to your table at two thirty,” she said.

  “Wait, that’s it? How do we come together as a group?” I said as I turned around only to see the back of Brandon’s shirt as he ran away from me and began hopping from one trampoline to the next.

  I continued. “Is there anything we can do extra to bring the group together besides eating pizza? This place is enormous.”

  “Well, you can reserve the dodgeball VIP trampoline room for a half hour, but it’s an extra fifty dollars,” she suggested.

  Ugh. Cheap Peter, he’ll pay for larger Angry Birds but not the one thing that would make the party decent. “Yes, we’ll do it,” I said.

  “OK, from two to two thirty it will be yours,” she said.

  “Well, can you announce it so everyone knows?” I asked, and she said she would.

  Mackenzie had invited a friend so she’d have someone to hang out with, but the girl’s mother had dropped her off without signing the consent form. For a second I thought I’d just sign one and say she was my daughter too but then I saw a teenage boy attempt to do a backflip and land on his nose, which was now bleeding profusely, so I decided that would not be a good idea. I said to Mackenzie’s friend, “Honey, call your mom to come back. She has to sign it.” Just then an announcement came on,
stating it was time for cake for an inaudible name. You couldn’t understand it over the techno portions of Rihanna’s “We Found Love”, so I set out to find every parent who looked remotely familiar from the school parking lot to tell them to go to the VIP trampoline at two o’clock. As I approached one mother, she said, “You know they have a big sign at Brandon’s birthday table that reads HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY BRANDON?” No, I didn’t know that because Kadisha never showed me to our table. I mean, could anything be more traumatic to a six-year-old boy on his birthday than having a big sign say “Happy 4th Birthday”? This had to be fixed ASAP before Brandon saw it, or he’d lose his shit. In his mind, a four-year-old is a baby, and he’s no fucking baby.

  I ran immediately over to Kadisha and told her about the sign and she assured me it would be changed. Then I continued to remind everyone about our VIP party, which was happening in minutes.

  At two, I start ushering in the kids and their parents like a bouncer at a club on Sunset Boulevard until I believed everyone was in. I noticed one boy who did not look familiar at all and seemed much too old to be in Brandon’s class. I went up to him and said, “I’m sorry, honey, this is a private party.”

  Then Peter came up to me and said, “No, that’s Carter, he’s Brandon’s best friend.”

  That always makes a working mother feel great—when she doesn’t recognize her son’s best friend. “Are you sure? He’s huge!” I asked. Peter said, “His parents held him back a couple of grades so that he would excel at sports.” It seemed to be paying off. No kid was safe. Carter was knocking children half his size down with the ball. One of those kids was Brandon, who I could tell was getting frustrated, because every time he tried to grab a ball, someone else got to it first. The fourth time it happened, he crunched down and started to fake cry. Goddammit, I thought. This party is costing me roughly seven hundred dollars. My son is not going to cry. So I went over to him and said, “Brandon, everybody can have the ball if they get to it first. That’s how the game works. Now, you better start having fun and stop crying or I’m going to give all your birthday presents away to poor kids.” Brandon looked at me for a moment and then said, “As if you know any poor kids. I’m sexy and I know it.” And he wiggled his hips to the song, which was now playing for the fourth time, and hopped away.